Rufus King, (born March 24, 1755, Scarborough, Massachusetts [U.S.]—died April 29, 1827, Jamaica, New York, U.S.) a Founding Father of the United States who helped frame the federal Constitution and effect its ratification. An active Federalist senator and able diplomat, he ran unsuccessfully for vice president (1804, 1808) and for president (1816).

Rufus King.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (file no. LC-DIG-ppmsca-31799)

After graduating from Harvard in 1777, he began a career in law, being admitted to the bar in 1780. He served in the statelegislature (1783–84) and in the Continental Congress (1784–87), where he introduced the resolution (February 21, 1787) calling for a convention at Philadelphia to draft a new Constitution. An eloquent advocate of a strong central government, he signed the new document and contributed substantially to its acceptance in Massachusetts. In the Continental Congress he introduced a resolution (1785) that would prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territory—a provision included permanently in the Ordinance of 1787, which set the pattern for future standards in the territories.

In 1788 King moved to New York where, after a year in the state assembly, he was elected one of its first U.S. senators (1789–96) and became a recognized Federalist leader in Congress. Sharing the Anglophile sentiments of his party, King went on to represent the new nation with tact yet firmness as ambassador to Great Britain for eight years (1796–1803) and again in 1825–26. During the period of domination by the (Jeffersonian) Democratic-Republican Party, King served once more in the Senate (1813–25) but received only a modest proportion of electoral votes for the nation’s highest offices on three different occasions.

the fundamental law of the U.S. federal system of government and a landmark document of the Western world. The oldest written national constitution in use, the Constitution defines the principal organs of government and their jurisdictions and the basic rights of citizens. (For a list of amendments...

early U.S. national political party, which advocated a strong central government and held power from 1789 to 1801, during the rise of the country’s political party system. The term federalist was first used in 1787 to describe the supporters of the newly written Constitution, who emphasized...

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(1755-1827). A Founding Father of the United States, Rufus King went on to become a diplomat and a recognized Federalist leader in Congress. He ran unsuccessfully for vice president (1804, 1808) and for president (1816).